Fanfiction:V Translanka Magness 7

<1025A.D.>

TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT

-REPORT NO. 7-

[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION]

CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES

CODE - "MAGNESS"

CODE EX. - "CUTTING CLEAR OF CLOUDS"

He was right; it was messy, very messy. He looked like Marcy had after her attempted fight with the wolfs. The boomerang still clutched in his soaking scarlet hand as if both had been thrust in a sloppy bucket of paint. The rage and anger left him almost immediately after the Amulet fell from the petite corpse's hand back into his own. It had actually begun to dissipate before, when he saw her cowering down there on the ground. There was a change-a shift-that he had felt; something...else.

After shouting, "Watch out!" to Gil, more in surprise or reactive impulse than in any kind of care or concern for his safety, Marcy had stood there, transfixed on the entire situation. She didn't really think he needed anyone to watch his back. His skill, his precision, he himself was a sight of horrific amazement. He had actually managed not only to catch it, but it didn't seem to hurt him at all. None of the fresh blood-for there was some dried dabs of flakes on his palm from when he entered this era-covering his hand and the weapon was his own.

He was a warrior with the heart for killing like that of a demon born from brimstone and flame. He was a vicious spirit sent up from hell. He was the archangel falling from the heavens. For one reason or another, this magic man was let loose upon the world as she knew it. Then it ended, the haze cleared, and he was her mysterious savior once again. Her eyes did not convey fear; they sparkled with an awe the likes of which he had never seen before. This is peculiar because he would have seen it, had he a mirror handy as a child, watching his sister work her magics in a brilliantly lit section of their home; their great palace in the sky.

"My god, what magic." The words formed thoughtlessly from Marcy's astounded lips. She no more knew the words on her tongue than she knew the man standing before her, splashed in the blood and bits of brain of a girl not less than a year younger then herself.

"We've got him." The first officer said aloud to his subordinates, sitting at various control panels around the small room, filled with various machines and computational devices, "We've got some major temporal flux going down; both sometime mid-summer. It's...it's during the United Fair."

"Sir...?" One of them asked. The thick Plexiglas windows flared with their regular irregular blue flashing light.

"This could be very big shit." He replied, "There have already been several deaths."

"Prevented or prompted?" Another asked. The first officer looked at him with a grave look spread on his face. The monitor in front of him glared and flashed striking red with bold numbers and words representing temporal dates and the effects of the alterations.

"Both..."

He ran and she followed him. There was no alternative. He had drawn too much attention to himself already. The guards at the bridge would not be long after Marcy. Add on to that the fact that he was close to drained. Over the course of his travels so far he had expended the energy the temporal rift had imbued him with.

He was on her level, if not a few inches above her in relative height, as they fled.

He had not the energy to even float which always seemed to come so effortlessly before.

"Where do you come from?" She finally said between quick intakes of fresh air. The sun, glimmering and shining through her hair, drew his eye to her. Great blond strands had broken free of her buns and trailed behind her as they ran; whipping back and forth in her motions. Aside from seeing her before, with the wolfs, this was an image he would not soon forget.

"Why do you ask this of me now?" Gil almost spat the words out. His own fair blue hair whisked behind him in one long great swirl.

"You must give me some answers." She pleaded, "I need to know."

"It's..." He searched for the words in his mind like a bat in the night. His eyes glanced up for a quick moment as if he saw something-expected to see something-there, but there was naught but the ever dazzling cerulean skies of the early summer afternoon, "It's...complicated."

He understood her position now. He had answers. She had questions. It is the very essence of youth to ask these questions and to seek knowledge in whatever form. But she was also looking for something else. She was looking for something he was very accustomed to and that he knew so well, that there was nothing but a whisper coating of ice between all of his memories-dearest and cheapest-and it; vengeance.

"We have to find someplace to go for the day." Gil at last said aloud, "Someplace no one will look for us and where no one will find us."

The sun, now beginning its decline into the western sea, flickered in and out of existence between the trees. The brightness carved not just shadows into the ground, but deep holes in reality where everything within was lost in forever black. The light was so luridly light and the dark so dazzlingly dark that each iris would flicker, refocusing going into one and exiting the other. It was a strobe of serene summer sunlight.

There was a palpable stench of decay festering in the air. A large crowd of luscious leaves was spread throughout an encompassing tree; standing out in the middle of the wreck like some ancient signal, there to draw the eye. There were two semi-crumbling walls about it; one at the right and one behind. Dirt and grass littered the surrounding grounds. Their traveling boots, both trail-worn, kicked long settled dust into large clouds that enveloped their knees. Anything that might have resembled a floor of any kind had long eroded to earthen ground.

To the sides of this ancient building were seemingly random markers placed in the ground. Most were just sticks jutting in all directions, some toppled over and others seemed to have caught their drunken friends. Others were of great stones and some old pictograms that reminded them both of long-faded family crests. There were one or two more obvious ones though, that would have told almost anyone what they were. They were sticks too, but theirs also held onto their old horizontal line of vine-twine and wood; their cross.

Marcy went about these, wondering who they were and when they were buried. As far as she knew, no one had ever seen these. She had never known this was here. It was a moldering mausoleum out in these western woods where no animals lurked and no birds sang. Her hand went out to them as her heart sank with wonderment and an all engrossing sense of confusion.

He paid them-the graves, or her for that matter-no current attention though. His interest lay within the great tree standing tall in the middle of this ruin. His gloved hand stroked the bark of the tree. Through the cuts left from his nails cutting into the leather when he traveled to this time, the cut left from the ‘rang, something else hard and rough under one of his gloves, and even past the long dried blood-some his, some the girls-covering his hand, it felt very rough and real.

There were six letters forming two conglomerations of nonsensical words and other marks struck into the tree that he didn't quite understand; a lower-case "e", an upper-case "N" followed by another "n" (this one lower-cased), a vertical cutting slash, a gnarled knot in the tree, another lower "e", an "F", and a lower "f", another slash going up and down, and then another lump of a knot. The slashes were deep and the knots protruded about an inch or so. It was all very deliberate and seemed somewhat important to him, but he couldn't think why exactly.

"What...is this place?" The words finally managed to choke out of her dry throat.

"It is a long forgotten place." He said with a slightly displeased sigh, "Once known simply as ‘The Cathedral'."

"The Lost Cathedral...?" She said gasping in awe.

"It is obviously not lost." He said motioning not just to them, but to the graves before them, "It is hidden. It is hiding if anything."

She looked at him with a sort of squint and head-tilt you see in people when something profound and unexpected happens. This was not profound though, especially not to him. It was truth. That fact made it somehow more unexpected though. He was so mysterious and knowledgeable. Like some lost poet or philosopher sifting and shifting through the world as if he knew everything and wanted nothing to do with any of it. This was also truth.

"Who are you really?" She finally asked, no longer able to sustain the absolute agony of holding it in.

"I've told you already. The answer is the same as where I am from." He said with a touch of finality. He wanted to say no more, but she could not leave it as such. She could not leave it with simply ‘it's complicated'.

"But you must tell me." She pleaded again, "I need to know. Don't you feel it, that...connection? You have the answers I need. I need you to help me."

He felt it alright. He had felt it before he even really saw her proper. Standing outside that little church of Fiona's, he had seen that one lone figure stand up against the wolfs in a last desperate attempt at life. She would have fought to her death, "What do you fight for? Where do you come from? Who are you?" He shot each question out like a little accusation, "I have no answers. Now, I am simply Gil. If you must know, I am searching for my past. I am hoping for a future and I am most certainly, hating this...present. You should stay away from me if you value...anything...anything at all."

"I have nothing to value Gil." She said. The words formed from her small and tightly pursed lips and the look smeared across her face dug into him like a rusty nail. There was a memory he had that was very much the same as this. Perhaps he was the one who had spoken those lackluster, yet poignantly moving, words and formed that frown of a face. Or did someone say it to him? Another girl...? A woman...? Perhaps it was actually man...?

"But, I'm trying...I think." She finished, dropping through the dim cloud and dubious fog of his memory. These are odd moments. The thought jabbed at him. Why is this happening like this? It didn't seem to make sense. There he was, reliving his memories. What was he doing here with this girl, hungry for answers? There he was again, acting a fool, trying to defy it. So he gave in.

"I'm here..." He started abruptly, "To find the answers I seek. I am certain you will find yours if you follow me. But I don't know if you'll like the answers you find. I don't know if you'll survive them. I just know it's just as important that you find your answers as I find my own."

"Yes, I know it too." She said, losing her own thick surface of frustratingly murky fog, "Like something wills it so."

"Annuit coeptis, perhaps, but we will it so." He declared thinly, "No matter what could be guiding these things, we choose the paths we lead. No one wears your shoes for you."

"There is no such thing as fate." She said just as plainly, finishing his thought.

She helped him gather wood for the fire as he fetched some water for her. She watched him recite the words and watched the flame rise from nothing and burn cleaner than any fire imaginable. There was no smoke to give signal and barely a bubble of noise. The sun was swallowed by the sea more than a few hours ago. They had worked in silence gathering, making sure not to take any of the markers, not even the fallen ones. No more questions would be answered, for that night at least.

She drank steadily from Gil's leather flask that reminded her of a kidney and wiped her mouth when she was finished.

Gil removed his gloves slowly. The fire's bluish light making his skin glow. The glove that was covered in the girl's blood had another glove underneath. A mesh of denadorite links, a chain mail glove. Marcy's eyes widened at this, but she was not particularly surprised at his cleverness. She was warmed by it.

Both of his hands had four distinct crescent moons in the palms spattered with his own dried blood. The blood had coagulated very soon and it had been flaking off of his skin for some time. He rubbed his slender hands together, wiping it all away. This was not the first time he had done this. Not with his own blood or with that of someone else. It was not the last time he would do it either. Not by far.

He looked down at his hands when he was satisfied and in his mind he smiled. His eyes showed it briefly and Marcy had enough time to glimpse it. Blood spilt into his hands was so natural of an occurrence. He looked up at her then and studied her bright eyes, her now blank face, and her youthful body.

"Rest..." He said at last, looking down to the ground at her feet. And she proceeded to lie on the solid earthen ground without so much as a word or even a simple nod. She looked at him one more time, and then turned to the stars for a moment before shutting her eyes. He sat and observed her there for an hour or more, slowly breathing in and out. He watched the steady rise and fall of her petite little breast and the flicker of her eyes as she reached REM and began to dream.

The movements made him tired. He wondered what he was supposed to really do with this powerful little girl. What her purpose was in his journey or what, perhaps, was his purpose in her own little quest. The unanswerable questions simply cluttered his mind. They had no real use currently. They would be answered when, and only when, the time came. So he swept them up and put them away. And he too slept...and dreamt.

Don't waste your time...

From: Fanfiction